2. What’s New in Exchange Server 2013?
Exchange
Server 2013, being the eighth major release of the Exchange Server
product, adds to the existing technology base that the most recent
version of Exchange (Exchange Server 2010) provides. Exchange
administrators familiar with Exchange Server 2007 and 2010 will find
that Exchange Server 2013 is about 70% to 80% the same; however, the
20% to 30% that is different is drastically different and requires some
relearning of the changes.
What’s the Same Between Exchange Server 2007/2010 and Exchange Server 2013?
The
core infrastructure of Exchange Server 2013 is basically the same as
Exchange Server 2007 and 2010. Microsoft continues to use the Jet EDB
database as the main database store. Some time ago, it was rumored that
Microsoft would rewrite Exchange to run off SQL Server; however,
neither Exchange Server 2013 nor versions coming out from Microsoft in
the foreseeable future will change the basic EDB database structure.
Exchange
Server 2013 still has the concept of a Mailbox server where EDBs are
stored, and where user mailbox data resides. An Exchange server can
have multiple Exchange databases running on the system, and multiple
Exchange servers can reside in an environment for both scalability as
well as redundancy.
Users can use the Microsoft Outlook client and can access Exchange using OWA, as shown in Figure 1, for browser-based access, as well as synchronize with Exchange from their mobile and tablet systems.
Figure 1. Outlook Web App in Exchange Server 2013.
Exchange
Server 2013 still uses the VSSBackup application programming interface
(API) to freeze the state of the Exchange database to perform a backup
of the Exchange database.
One of the most
important things that the users of an Exchange Server 2013 environment
who get moved from Exchange Server 2007 or 2010 to Exchange Server 2013
will notice is nothing new or different from the end-user standpoint,
assuming you keep the same Outlook client that the user has been using.
A transition from Exchange Server 2007 and 2010 to Exchange Server 2013
does not require an upgrade to the Outlook 2013 client. Effectively,
the user’s mailbox is moved from an old server to a new server, and the
user still has the exact same look, feel, and functionality as he had
with Exchange Server 2007 and 2010.
What’s Missing in Exchange Server 2013 That Was in Previous Versions?
For
administrators, the biggest change is the Exchange Management Console
(EMC) is completely gone. No more graphical user interface (GUI)–based
administration; however, that doesn’t mean that administrators are
stuck with just PowerShell in the Exchange Management Shell (EMS)
environment. What Microsoft has done is expand the Exchange Control
Panel (ECP) from Exchange Server 2010 into the new Exchange
Administration Center (EAC).
The Exchange
Administration Center allows the administrator a web-based access to
everything the administrator used EMC for before. The administrator can
create and manage user mailboxes, manage Exchange servers, manage
public folders, create send and receive connectors, perform eDiscovery
tasks, and the like.
For
administrators more familiar with Exchange Server 2007 than the most
recent Exchange Server 2010, the concept of the storage group has been
removed. With Exchange Server 2007, when an organization implemented
Cluster Continuous Replication, each database had to be in its own
storage group. With database recoverability as an important topic in
Exchange Server 2010 and 2013 in which all databases should have a
replica, the need for storage groups was removed in Exchange Server
2010, and Exchange Mailbox servers simply have databases on them.
Relative
to Exchange databases, the STM database that was in Exchange Server
2007 has been removed, so Exchange Server 2010 and 2013 are now back to
just the EDB database as it was in Exchange 2000 Server and prior
versions. Rather than completely removing the STM database, Microsoft
incorporated the streaming data technology into the new EDB database,
so instead of having two databases for each mailbox and trying to
reconcile the storage of information within those two databases, the
combined mailbox database is now the standard.
From
an administration standpoint, the concept of administrative groups and
routing groups has been completely removed. Administrative groups were
introduced with Exchange 2000 Server as a method of grouping together
users to identify who would manage and administer groups of mailboxes.
Administrative groups were brought forward from Exchange Server 5.5
where administration was done based on sites connected by site
connectors. In Exchange Server 2013 (as in Exchange Server 2007 and
2010), administration is now completely consolidated into an enterprise
view of users and mailboxes. The administration of the users and
mailboxes is handled as delegated rights of administrators, not by a
group of users and servers. So, rather than grouping together servers
and users into special containers, an administrator is merely assigned
rights to manage specific users, mailboxes, servers, or preexisting
containers.
As noted in the preceding
paragraph, routing groups have also been removed. Rather than having to
group servers by routing groups, Exchange Server 2010 (and continued in
Exchange Server 2013) no longer has separate routing groups within
Exchange. Instead, Exchange uses sites from Active Directory Sites and
Services to determine organizational sites and the routing of message
communications to those sites.
With
Exchange Server 2013, Microsoft has also eliminated the support of
communicating directly with Exchange via remote procedure calls (RPC).
Users now access Exchange Server 2013 through Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP), Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), Post
Office Protocol 3 (POP3), or Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP).
By eliminating RPC, Microsoft has simplified the number of client
protocols needed to be supported and managed by the Exchange Server
2013 Client Access server, which in turn has helped Microsoft improve
the reliability and scalability of Exchange Server 2013 in a geo-global
implemented environment.
With the
release of Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft had noted that public
folders were going to be deemphasized, which basically means they would
be going away in a future version of Exchange. What you will find is
when you install Exchange Server 2013 from scratch, public folders are
not created at all. You need to manually add public folders to a
Mailbox server and extend public folder access from the server system.
During a transition, if the organization has public folders, they will
continue to operate in Exchange Server 2013. So as much as Microsoft
has stated that public folders are being deemphasized, they are still
completely and fully supported in Exchange Server 2013, and because of
the prevalent use of public folders in enterprises, it would seem that
public folders will continue to be in Exchange for the foreseeable
future.
